Backstory

D.E. Schrader

D.E. Schrader is a Los Angeles-based writer/director/producer. He has an extensive background in stand-up, sketch, and improv comedy, with well-received features and shorts including NoHo, Being Ozzy Osbourne, Bloodline, Mercy No Mercy, and Come and Knock: The Other Ray Charles. Along with co-creator Kristian Horn, Schrader developed the idea for Baby Badass in 2005 while stuck in a Big Bear cabin, snowed-in, eating cookies that may or may not have included mind-altering properties.

Kristian Horn

Discovered as a babe in an abandoned comic book storage box and bitten by a radioactive comic fan when he was a teenager, Kristian Horn is the Founder/Editor/Producer of Part-Time Fanboy. He is a freelance writer and interviewer, cartoonist and designer, whose most recent project is the kid-friendly Periwinkle Puss.www.periwinklepuss.com

He’s also acted in some really bad movies a long time ago so the less said about that the better.

Conceived in 2006, with the basic idea that a small baby kicking everybody’s ass was somewhat amusing, creators D.E. Schrader and Kristian Horn posed the sadly prescient thought, “Imagine a future in which, say… someone like Donald Trump was President, and then an asteroid hit, and the nukes sent to destroy the asteroid came back down terminating about 90% of the population, and then-- about twenty years later things got really bad.”

A few years went by, and they decided to try and make something out of the concept. Schrader is a writer and filmmaker, Horn is an artist, writer, and certified comic book aficionado. Check out his blog and podcast here. They came up with a basic premise that touched on classic comic tropes; a failed military experiment with super powers, a daring escape from a secret lab, and a fugitive existence as a stranger in a strange land. They threw in some hard-boiled Miller-esque dialog, a little of the ol’ sex and violence, and what emerged was an original Superantihero and an exciting story filled with action, adventure, and the occasional diaper change.

The actual comic book took a detour as an animation pitch gained traction. The story had certain elements and marketing potential that led to multiple meetings and an eventual descent into development hell. Several more years went by as other projects took precedence and the demands of normal life pushed Baby Badass back into the womb of good ideas and profound procrastination.

A rebirth began in 2015, when talented artist Tim Larsen was brought on board to complete issue No. 1. Jason Martin from Action Lab Danger Zone was taken by the story and the vivid, retro style, signing the creators to a mini-series deal with the first book set for release in February 2018.